Supermarket Facts

What's wrong with supermarkets? Most of us have become increasingly used to them in recent years, and often don't question why we visit them. Here's a few facts about supermarkets.

In recent decades supermarkets have grabbed 80% of the market share nationwide at the expense of many small local businesses such as bakers, greengrocers and butchers. 25 years ago supermarkets only accounted for 20% of food sales. Anyone who has lived in Dorking for more than a few years will have seen the continuing demise of these establishments at first hand, as in virtually every other town in the country. We now have no greengrocer, only one butcher and baker and nowhere other than the big supermarkets to buy many groceries. Our High Streets up and down the UK are becoming increasingly alike in the phenomenon which has become known as Clone Town Britain.

Although Dorking, still nominally just about a "market town", has a sizable number of national stores in its centre, it also still has a fair proportion of local independent traders, many of whom could go under if a major store (also selling non-food items) were to appear in the town.

In their drive to cut costs, however, the practices of supermarkets have had many negative consequences, some of which need to reversed in the coming decades if Britain is to achieve its target on reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases, as well as many other sustainable practices which it is not in a supermarket chain's interest to observe. Supermarkets transport food enormous distances, encourage their customers to drive long distances to their stores and routinely package their produce in excessive non-biodegradable packaging.

Supermarkets' success is judged entirely by the amount of profit they make; they are not by their nature interested in the quality or the origin of their produce as long as it sells; likewise the well-being of their staff and customers are not primary concerns. The single-minded pursuit of profits by our supermarkets have led to the following consequences:

Many farmers, growers and producers of food across the country have been driven out of business by the supermarkets, who now source a disproportionate amount of food from overseas, which is then unnecessarily flown into the UK - causing environmental damage on top of that to the nation's economy.

A small number of regional warehouses mean food is routinely transported hundreds of miles to get to each store, almost none of which actually produce any food on their premises. Even food which is by chance produced close to a store will have to travel to the nearest warehouse and back - all in the name of efficiency.

The virtual destruction of many town centres, with shopping being moved to out of town superstores necessitating car journeys to get there. Government policy has now been changed to make it a lot harder to build out of town stores, but the big shops have countered this by returning to what is left of the town centres to try and claw back the 20% of the market they are still to collar.

The demands of supermarkets have caused hard-pressed farmers to cut corners leading to health scares in recent years such as BSE, Mad Cow Disease, E.Coli and others. Likewise genetically modified crops have been introduced in the name of increasing profits, which have caused further damage to the environment and nobody knows the long-term consequences of producing or consuming these crops.

Supermarkets make more money from selling processed food than they do from the basic ingredients, hence the proliferation of items like ready made meals in recent years. Contemporaneously Britain has become the most obese nation in Europe (proportionally more food is bought from supermarkets in the UK than in any other European country). The supermarkets control what we eat.

Independent shops are part of the local economy and often support their local community. Many independent stores buy their supplies locally and use other local traders, and this can help the local economy. Supermarkets in contrast siphon as much as 95 per cent of their takings away from local areas to shareholders and distant corporations.

The National Retail Planning Forum has calculated that superstores have an overall negative effect on employment. The average superstore resulted in a net loss of 276 full-time jobs, only some of which are replaced by part-time workers.

Supermarkets have high staff turnovers, pay low wages and employ mainly a female workforce doing repetitive low-interest work. Yet despite the low pay our supermarkets are amongst the largest, most profitable companies in the UK: Tesco, for example, posted profits last year of over £2bn.

Supermarket food is inferior to that from equivalent local stores. Fresh produce is frequently several days older than its equivalent local fare due to the excessive transportation, and many products such as meat and fish are handled by staff without the experience and know-how that a specialist retailer has.

Supermarkets are primarily interested in appearance and shelf-life, particularly of fresh produce; taste is a poor third after these two criteria. Consequently the supermarkets insist their growers and producers supply them with varieties of food which don't necessarily taste as good as other less attractive shorter-lasting variations.

Shopping in supermarkets is a dull and sterile experience compared to buying local produce originating from within the community and sold by knowledgeable local vendors.

For all these reasons at least a partial return to locally produced and manufactured food sold in smaller premises than those currently dominating our high streets is in everyone's interest, and is the only realistic aim in the medium to long term if Britain is to return to a sustainable economy.